


And you know She's Never Coming Back...

by SolanumTuberosum



Series: You Kept Falling in Love (and Then One Day...) [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 12:26:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolanumTuberosum/pseuds/SolanumTuberosum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He keeps all her old things and, when he opens up her closet to find her pyjama top, the one that has a dancing monkey on the front, he goes to sleep smelling it, clinging to her smokey scent that is slowly fading.</p><p>He copes.</p><p>He doesn’t live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And you know She's Never Coming Back...

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song 'Charlotte' by Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions.

 

At Myrcella’s funeral, Robb does not go up to speak about her to a room full of strangers, strangers that never really knew her.

Robb does not speak at all, in fact, just sits in the second row of pews—the first being reserved for family, and although Renly had offered up his own seat, Renly who was trying very hard to appear stoic, Robb had declined, unwilling to be anywhere near Cersei—and watches the strangers cry and simper and grip each other that bit tighter and he tries not to hate them all.

Tyrion sits in the front row, Tyrion who is—was—Myrcella’s favourite uncle, Renly being more of an older brother to her than anything,  and Robb watches him as he tries to hide the way his hands shake by balling them into fists, tries to hide the bloodshot nature of his eyes by rubbing at them.

The dwarf is drunk because Myrcella was always his favourite out of the whole Lannister brood, and, once, when Cersei had been drunk enough, Myrcella told him how her mother had told her she looked exactly like Joanna except for her pale green eyes, eyes she’d inherited from her grandfather. She’d told him that Tyrion had always gravitated towards her, how he’d even apologised once, for using her to catch a glimpse of the mother he never knew and the warm eyes his father had never had.

The man being intoxicated doesn’t stop Robb from almost shrinking under the his gaze when he turns to stare at the boy who caught his niece’s heart, but Tyrion simply nods at him, as if approving of Myrcella’s choice, and turns around.

Shireen is in the second row with Robb and he knows it angers Cersei that Robert’s bastards are also in the second row, Mya holding Barra tightly as the baby whimpers every so often, sensing the distress of her older sibling. Gendry is stone-faced, though Robb can see the anger burn brightly when he looks at Cersei, the urge to strike her evident in his balled up fists, and Edric, from his place in between the two oldest, is crying.

When the funeral is over, Robb is led by Catelyn to the car, so they can follow the hearse to the graveyard, but she doesn’t lead him quick enough because he spots the Martells and almost turns back.

Arianne’s dark eyes warn him to stay away at the same time as her firm grip on her youngest brother warns him not to engage the eldest Stark sibling.

Robb is practically forced into the car by Arya as her boyfriend goes to drag Trystane to their own car and Robb glares at her but she glares right back and he doesn’t have the energy to fight with her so he turns away, fuming at the Martell’s audacity to come to Cella’s funeral, not when the last thing she’d said to him was to do something anatomically impossible because he’d broken into her apartment to ‘win her back from the Stark dog’.

No, Trystane Martell was certainly not welcome.

His family drive to the graveyard in relative peace, only Bran and Rickon occasionally upsetting the atmosphere, Arya and Sansa both in different cars. Robb doesn’t say a word as they arrive—he hasn’t said anything since the hospital, really—and he doesn’t even speak when they lower Myrcella’s body into the ground because if he does, he’s fairly sure he may start crying and he refuses to do that, not in front of Cersei or Joffrey or Jaime—whose hateful eyes had burned into him whenever they caught his own gaze.

Robb feels completely empty when everyone starts to leave and when the steady drizzle turns to heavy rain, even Myrcella’s family leave, the rain cleverly disguising the tears on Cersei’s face that Robb might be imagining because he wants her to _hurt_ , to burn in hell and to feel as completely alone as he does.

He is the last one at the grave and when he’s sure everyone is gone, he falls to his knees next to the freshly dug earth and sobs into his hands till no more tears will fall and he’s soaked through to his bones and all that comes out of his mouth are pathetic little whimpers and whines.

The elegant and sharp smell of tea tree and lavender from Sansa is familiar, but not the smokey spice smell he wants as she helps him up and clutches his hand to lead him away to the low down car she drives, the one Willas finds easiest to get into since he busted up his leg.

They bring him home to his—Myrcella’s really, but she’d had his name put on the lease—apartment and Loras and Renly come, bringing Margaery, Jon and Tommen, and Renly heaves him into the shower fully clothed, turning on the hot water till Robb stops shaking.

Theon doesn’t come because Theon never liked Myrcella, especially after she called him out on his bullshit with Jeyne Poole, one of Sansa’s friends.

They drink on the floor in front of the fire in the living room and, when they all end up crying and drunkenly declaring what they loved about her, Robb dies a little bit more inside because he keeps reaching over, to share a laugh with his fiancée, forgetting who they’re reminiscing for a second before everything catches up and the laughter dies in his throat.

Sansa catches his eye every time he does this and he hates the pity in her eyes, hates _her_ as she wraps herself around Willas to comfort him as he remembers carrying Myrcella five miles when she’d broken her ankle on a horse riding expedition. Loras and Renly’s laughs are watery and pale and Loras squeezes Renly’s hand to reassure him and when Margaery bursts into tears and proclaims that Myrcella was the first girl she’d ever been with, Jon soothes her with a soft smile and a whisper.

Robb hates them all for being happy and he knows he’s not being fair but he doesn’t care because he wants Myrcella back and he’s not sure what he’s meant to do with his life now she’s not in it.

 

* * *

 

Tyrion comes to the apartment a week after the funeral, bringing so much alcohol with him Robb thinks they could probably fill a swimming pool.

They drink straight through the next week and through the next and occasionally Tommen comes by and drinks with them, but he’s always sent away again because he’d got school where as Robb and Tyrion both have a steady income neither really have to work for.

Tyrion leaves eventually and Jon arrives and throws Robb in the shower, telling him he stinks and needs to shave, that it’s been a month and people are expecting to see him up and about, not looking like a hairy biker and smelling like a wheelie bin.

Robb can barely believe that so much time has passed because it still seems like he was watching her die just hours ago and with that image, he pulls the brandy out from under her side of the bed when he stumbles back into their bedroom, shaved and clean and with a headache that threatens to break his skull in half.

Jon sighs when he re-enters and takes the drink off him.

“You can’t just sit here and drink, Robb. Your mother’s worried, everyone is.” Jon attempts to persuade, but everyone doesn’t include Myrcella, so he really doesn’t care.

He doesn’t see the point of caring and that makes him remember Myrcella’s words, just a few short months ago.

_“When I was younger, I was… sad, a lot, I guess.” She tells him one day as they lie curled up around each other on her bed, “I didn’t know what I was doing, or what I wanted to do. I asked Mum what made her get up every morning, I asked Uncle Jaime and Tyrion, but none of them could give me any answers._

_“Tyrion just said spite, but I don’t have anything to be spiteful about. Then I asked Granddad and he told me I had to make my own reasons.” She looks at him, all gold skin and gold hair and pretty, soft eyes. “I think you’re my reason. Not my only reason, of course, but a main one.”_

He’d laughed and kissed her and told her if she was ever sad again, he’d always be there to give her reasons not to be because he had never thought she’d leave him, that he’d be alone and without a lifeline of his own.

Myrcella, he decided, had completely changed his life. He was fine without her, but once he’d met her, she’d buried herself so deeply in his mind and heart that now she was gone, there was nothing else left.

He puts clothes on and leaves with Jon to go have dinner with his family, though he barely speaks throughout the whole thing and his mother wisely keeps him away from Willas and Sansa.

 

* * *

 

 

For months after Myrcella’s death, Robb copes. He eats, he drinks—though he drinks too much and of the wrong type—he sleeps and he gets up and goes to work, managing over Stark Law, the best law firm in the north.

Though when he goes home, he tops up his inebriated state from the brandy in his office with expensive red wine, the kind Myrcella had stocked in a wine cupboard that Robb only managed to empty two months ago, because she’d bought it by the box.

 _“Life’s too short for cheap wine!” She laughs as he comes home to find her stuffing a crate of_ **_Domaine Leflaive_ ** _in his own wardrobe because hers is full, but the wine store is full as well._

He stares at pictures of them, of her, of their one, solitary Christmas together, the best Christmas he’s ever had because they just ignored their families for once and ate chicken wings for turkey and chips for roast potatoes and instead of Christmas pudding, it’s chocolate sauce and very messy bed sheets.

_“I’m so sick of families, and arguing.” She reasons, twisting her hands in her skirt and looking up at him through dark eyelashes. “Can it please just be us? We can go see them on Boxing Day, and spend New Years’ with them. Let’s just spend Christmas together.”_

_She grins slyly then, a wicked gleam in her pale green eyes._

_“I’ll make it worth your while, babe.”_

He keeps all her old things and, when he opens up her closet to find her pyjama top, the one that has a dancing monkey on the front, he goes to sleep smelling it, clinging to her smokey scent that is slowly fading.

He copes.

He doesn’t live.

 

* * *

 

The first big dinner party Robb attends after the accident is almost a year later, held in Winterfell’s grand hall and the Tully, Arryn, Tyrell and Baratheon families have all been invited because Jon and Margaery are engaged, Willas and Sansa have set a date and Shireen and Bran have announced they’re together, so it’s only right to invite everyone.

Robb wants to leave as soon as he’s arrived, because Cersei is staring at him with an untamed hatred in her eyes and Robert, sober for once in his life, is also staring at him, though he’s not angry, he seems almost sad.

Robb doesn’t dwell, seeking out Tommen, the little boy that was suddenly so old and angry and tired.

_“Tommen?” Myrcella laughs—she’s always laughing and it’s a breath of fresh air to Robb—and crumples up the letter from Tommen’s teacher, “The Kitten King? Yelling at a teacher? Oh please, what is this drivel?”_

_Tommen shrugs his shoulders at her, shrinking back under her fierce gaze—though everything about Myrcella is fierce, that’s just how she is._

_“He was spouting off some homophobic bullshit and how it’s a ‘sin’.” The boy, who could be Myrcella’s double if he had long hair and boobs, explains, “I got annoyed. I didn’t yell and I wasn’t the only one arguing.”_

_“Sweetheart, if anyone tells you how you’re meant to be, you come to me and Uncle Renly, okay?” She smiles at her brother, pressing her red lips to his forehead as she stands up from the couch, “We’ll sort them out, okay?”_

_They go for ice-creams when Tommen and Robin are attacked for holding hands and if the guys that do it end up in hospital, too scared to talk about what happened, Myrcella, Renly and Loras—and possibly Mya, who has a soft spot for the lone Arryn child as well as being Tommen’s half sister—certainly don’t know anything about it._

Tommen looks a lot older and bigger than he did when Myrcella was still alive, less like her and more like his uncle Jaime now, and his arm is thrown casually around Robin’s shoulders, both of them pointedly ignoring Lysa’s furious glares.

“Who’d you think is going to kick off first?” Tommen’s question is a greeting when Robb sits down next to the two boys and he chuckles softly.

“You never know at these things.” He muses, propping his feet up on a chaise and relaxing into the soft creamy leather of the sofa, “Who lost it last time?”

“Joffrey.” Tommen sighs, because generally, except for that one time that Roslin and Edmure had ended up shouting at each other, it’s his family that starts the arguments, “He tried to hit on Margaery and well, no one liked that. Loras was the first to notice and that caught Jon’s attention and everything went south from there.”

Robb nods and watches the room, full of people laughing and smiling, though most of the pleasantries being exchanged were all fake and hid bitterness and poison.

He hates them for that, for their insincerities and their lies and the masked exteriors that nearly all of them wore, especially the two more southronly families who practiced in front of the vicious pack of press hounds so they could scheme their ways into more comfortable positions.

Myrcella hated them as well, she used to laugh at them and tell him what was really being said and hidden by each and every one of the southron Houses.

Robb notices Lysa getting gradually angrier as Tommen and Robin relax more, sinking further into the couch and when Robin gets tired—he’d had an epileptic fit just that morning, Robb knows, because Tommen was being even more affectionate that usual, kissing the younger boy’s dark hair and stroking the exposed skin of Robin’s hip from where his t-shirt had ridden up—and lays his head down in Tommen’s lap, the younger Tully sister loses it.

“Sweetrobin!” She shrieks, her eyes narrowing in her fury because Lysa had always been of the opinion that Robin was hers, _forever_ hers and that the sick little Lannister boy had no right to her boy, that Tommen was slowly poisoning Robin against her. In Robb’s opinion, Lysa Arryn should have been committed years ago.

Robin jerks up, but Tommen’s arm stays firmly around his waist as he glares defiantly at the paranoid, half-mad woman standing in front of him, hands on her hips.

Robb can remember a time that Tommen would have jumped away from his boyfriend, but the youngest Baratheon isn’t that boy anymore, isn’t the boy who tried hard in school, never quite living up to his sister’s straight A record but still better than Joffrey, isn’t the boy who cried when his kitten got run over or the boy that had gone straight to his older sister when Joffrey had hit him or threatened him.

Tommen is different now, now he had no sister to go running to. He gets into fights because his temper clouds out Robin trying to convince him to walk away, he is barely ever at home because him and Robin normally stay at Robb’s flat in the bedroom Myrcella had kept for him and when he isn’t there or at school, he’s getting completely wasted in the old Rec, the one Robb used to go to find Theon when they were still teenagers.

Robb can’t say anything because after all, Tommen’s still a teenager and Robb, well, he’s not ditch-drinking, but he’s definitely not sober all the time either.

He’d probably not sober even half the time.

“Why can’t you just realise—” Lysa’s half way through her tirade before Robb intervenes because her screeching is doing nothing for his headache.

“Give it a rest, aunty.” He sighs, getting to his feet, “Robin’s flown from the nest and he’s happy. Just leave them alone?”

She scowls at him and he can see a lecture on the tip of her tongue but a cold voice cuts through the air first.

“Getting involved in family matters that don’t concern you again, Robb?” Cersei Lannister’s voice is quiet and so much like Myrcella’s that he freezes, unable to look anywhere, unable to _run_ anywhere.

He doesn’t speak for a long beat, no one does, until Cersei’s high, fake laugh—so not like Myrcella’s loud, booming laughter that’s much more like Robert’s, to her chagrin—permeates the air and frees Robb’s tongue so that he can answer.

“Something amusing you, ma’am?” He grits out, forcing himself to be civil, though when he turns to look at Cersei all he wants to do is hit her, backhand her to wipe the politely vindictive look off her lovely face.

_Myrcella’s face is barely recognisable when he finally manages to kick the door off its hinges because there’s glass that’s ripped into her cheek, parting the flesh and leaving blood to gush down her, choking her as it pours over her mouth and nose and staining her gold hair crimson._

“You are.” She smiles at him, flashing teeth and angry eyes making him remember Theon and Myrcella arguing and it physically hurts him to see the similarities between them, though Myrcella always looked more like her grandmother than mother, with lighter eyes than Cersei but darker hair and _god_ , he hates looking at the woman that essentially killed the best thing in his life.

“You shouldn’t interfere with families, Robb.” She warns him, her voice traitorously kind, “People get hurt.”

“No, you hurt people.” He sneers and they’re not talking about Robin and Tommen anymore. Robb’s fairly sure they never have been and when Cersei’s eyes narrow into slits and she puts down the crystal cut glass of red wine and steps forward, he’s also fairly sure she’s about to recreate the scene they’re both talking about.

“ _I_ was trying to _protect_ Myrcella.” She hisses out, all composure gone. The room is deathly quiet because most of them know that both Robb and Cersei are more than a little bit drunk, though they hide it through years—only a year in Robb’s case, but he’s a fast learner, especially when his dad’s his boss—of experience. “Because she was too good for you, just as Joffrey is too good for your sister. You _ruined_ her.”

_Her breathing is shallow, so shallow he can barely see her chest moving under her blood-soaked shirt and when he presses his hands fruitlessly to her wounds on her face because at first, he doesn’t notice the chunk of metal embedded in her chest that has crushed her ribcage and is dangerously close to her heart._

“I ruined her?” Robb demands, stepping forwards and invading Cersei’s space because, after all, he’s bigger than her and taller and stronger and if he wanted to—which he does, so _fucking_ much—he could snap her neck quite easily, “You _killed_ her, you stupid—”

“If you had never gone anywhere near her, none of this would have happened!” Cersei roars, hands clenching and unclenching at her sides, “She was a _Lannister_! She was going to _be_ something, you insolent boy! She was _not_ going to marry some drunken lawyer—”

“Drunk?” He laughs, laughs right into her face so he can show how pathetic he thinks she is, how unworthy of any respect, “You’re a raging alcoholic, you hypocritical bitch!”

“Robb—” His mother’s stern voice is quickly drowned out by Cersei’s scream of rage and every other sound is drowned out by the blood rushing in his ears as the pure fury settles into him when Myrcella’s mother’s hand connects with his face.

She goes to strike him again and he catches her wrist, forcing it down with bruising force, such force that he can hear the bones there start to grind under the fragile skin and for the first time, Cersei looks truly scared.

_He doesn’t look down, can’t physically force himself to, because the whole front end of her—red—car has been crushed and if he looks down, he’ll see the mangled state her legs are in, broken and bent underneath the metal and plastic and when she screams again in absolute agony, he looks at her face with desperate eyes and sees the fear there, the love and pain and terror._

“You killed Myrcella. You killed the most beautiful, sincere, fierce, loving girl, the most _perfect_ fucking girl, all because you didn’t like the fact she chose me to be with. She chose me. She chose to live with me, to agree to marry me. We were going to grow old together with six kids and fifty grandkids and we’d die when we were old and grey and happy with our lives and _you,_ Cersei fucking Lannister, ruined that for no other reason than you _didn’t like her choices._ Her choices, _hers_.” He’s in her face, still gripping her wrist, and glaring at her, his voice cold and deadly. “And I have to live with having seen her die knowing I had a true chance of being absolutely happy and with the one I loved and, _god_ , I could fucking kill you for taking that—for taking _her_ —away from me.”

_“It’ll be okay, baby.” He whispers, clutching her hands in his, “It’ll all be okay. We’ll get you to the hospital and they’ll fix you up and you’ll be fine.”_

_“They’re on the way now!” Renly yells because the sound of car alarms and people yelling would drown him out otherwise, “Oh god, Myrcella, just hang in there.”_

_Robb can feel her pulse shuddering in her wrist and she wheezes, letting out a strangled moan._

_“I—Robb, I don’t want to—”Air isn’t coming quick enough and it’s hard for her to talk but she continues on and Robb loves her for it, “I love you. I’m so sorry, Robb, I’m so—”_

_Another deep gasp and shake and he can literally feel her draining away and he sobs, gripping her cold, bloody hands tighter._

_“Please, please, Myrcella. Please don’t leave me, please.” He begs, kissing her lips and eyes and mouth and whispering fervently into her bloody gold skin. “God,_ please _, I need you. I can’t—I can’t—”_

_Her whole body is shaking now, convulsing from the sheer effort of breathing and the pain and her gasp for air are slowing down and he can see her eyes beginning to droop, her hands starting to go lax in his and he can’t stop the tears and cries of pain, absolute agony because he can hear sirens but they’re not close enough, they won’t make it—_

_“I’m so—I’m—sorry, Robb, I’m so—”Myrcella’s breathing cuts out completely and she stills and he can’t control the howls of pain as he shakes her and kisses her bloody mouth and tries,_ tries _, to bring her back to him._

_He doesn’t think it can be real, that the pure anguish he’s feeling ought to wake him up and he’ll be beside a healthy and whole Myrcella, not the dead girl in front of him, her face split open and covered in dried and clotting blood, her body mangled and still bleeding profusely, bleeding so much it looks like he’s been stabbed, so much of her blood has seeped on to him._

_Renly pulls him away and he roars in anger, fighting to get away, kicking and shoving, but Loras is holding him as well and god, he wants to kill them both because he can’t just leave Myrcella, not when she’s scared and bleeding and_ dying _. He refuses to believe she’s dead, not when she stopped breathing under his hands, not when the firemen cut her out and can’t find a pulse and not when the paramedics can’t resuscitate her._

_Renly, a crying Renly, something Robb had never seen before, pulls him away properly as they load Myrcella into the ambulance and with everyone staring at him, their eyes burning him, suddenly the smell of blood and thick, cloying scent of death is too much and he doubles over and heaves up everything in his stomach._

Robb lets Cersei’s wrist go and shoves past her, shoves past all of them, all the liars and cheaters and good people that he can’t help but hate, slamming the door as he leaves.

He knows he should have never bothered coming.

**Author's Note:**

> So that happened.
> 
> Oops.


End file.
